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New Scientist Live

LIGO should more than double its gravitational wave haul in 2017

LIGO lets rip

LIGO

By Lisa Grossman

After LIGO, the deluge. In February this year, it was announced that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) caught the first ever signs of gravitational waves. Next year, the floodgates will open.

Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time shaken off when a massive body accelerates. On 14 September 2015, when LIGO was still warming up, an unmistakably huge gravitational wave hit. The signal came from a pair of black holes about 30 times the mass of the sun do-si-doing around each other. Their dance got faster and faster until they crashed together and merged into a single, larger black hole. Then, last December, we saw another one.

Now that we know what we’re doing, the next haul should be massive. Having seen two strong events in three months, we should see at least six in the first half of next year – possibly more. Plus, the team has been upgrading LIGO’s detectors and they are 15 to 20 per cent more sensitive now.

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If all goes well, the two detectors will have an assistant next year. The VIRGO detector in Italy is expected to start taking data in March 2017, meaning all three detectors will operate simultaneously for a time. That will enable us to pinpoint the source of gravitational waves in the sky, so more conventional telescopes can follow up and check for a visible counterpart to the signal.

Catching more black hole collisions will also help map out their distribution in the universe, which is nearly impossible to do any other way. They may also help us probe the nature of dark energy by giving us a new way to measure cosmic distances.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Boom time for space-time ripples”